Las Vegas — The 2024 Printing United Expo was held inside the Central and South halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. It is considered “the most dynamic and comprehensive printing event in the world.” The expo featured over a million square feet of equipment and solutions.
Canon introduced me to two new large format printers called the imagePROGRAF TZ and TX Series. They both offer improved color quality, enhanced productivity, and labor-saving features over the previous models. In addition, the new printers use up to 29 percent less power when operating.
“A lot of improvements, these printers are designed for mid- to high-volume customers targeting the architectural, engineering and construction fields,“ said Brian Coombs, director of product planning and marketing at Canon U.S.A., Inc. “You’ll see some improvements to automation. One of the great things about these units is you’ll be able to automatically load the media. It will automatically determine the width, height and length without any user intervention. What we’re doing this year is speeding up that process. First, our poster printing speeds have increased.”
“We’re introducing a new magenta ink. We’re also seeing improvements in image processing. The entire gamut is larger—your blues, your yellows, etcetera. The color that you’re going to see on this machine relative to the predecessor is more vivid. We’ve also added color calibration as well. That will ensure that your color is not only consistent from one printer over time but if you have multiple printers across multiple locations, you’ll also see color consistency from that standpoint as well.“
Oriol Gacsch from HP told me about their new large format printer called the HP Latex 800 W printer. It features a maximum media width of 64 inches and contains 3-liter ink cartridges. The Latex 800 W can print with speeds up to 388 ft² per hour.
“You can print on transparent films and highlight certain areas of the print,” he explained. “You can also do metallic effects thanks to the white ink. For example, one of the applications that the printer is now doing here is some travel prints on a semi-transparent film. It’s a very easy-to-load machine with no spindles. You can just load the roll and it is latex ink which means the prints come out pure and you can use them right away. You can move them to the cutter or put them out. There’s no degassing—no waiting time. You do see a very large panel and these are very big ink boxes of three liters. Operators can run different areas of their shop as supposed to having to babysit the white format printer.”
HP also highlighted their new partnership with Formula One with drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. HP is a new title partner with the Scuderia Ferrari racing team.
“That’s a great partnership between to leading, innovating companies and a great proof point of what large format in sports and events. It starts with the pilots that have suits. Those suits are personalized and a lot of that is done with HP technology. The vehicle has wraps and logos that is all printed with HP latex. The pit box is wrapped with wallpaper on the back. That makes a very immersive experience whenever they’re bringing sponsors and the like. On top of this, there’s merchandising opportunities all thanks to this partnership between HP and Ferrari.”
A company from metro Detroit called Stahls showed off their new heat press called the Hotronix ProPlace IQ Retro Mount System for Dual Air Fusion IQ. It is designed to help users place transfers onto apparel in a fast and accurate manner while also improving overall efficiency by reducing downtime, waste, and errors.
“This is the ProPlace IQ, this is revolutionizing what people can do with heat transfer,“ said Ben Carroll from Stahls. “We used to use lasers and other instruments. Now, we can have that image projected down onto the shirt telling the user exactly where to place it. So when they place it on the transfer, a perfect transfer every single time. It’s fully integratabtle into their systems so they can be using barcode scanners, things like that to quickly load up jobs. This is auto timed for 12 seconds. It’s going to auto pop up and move out of the way allowing the user to peel the transfer hot. Then, ready to press the next one as well.”
Brother debuted their Digital line 2200 fully automated pretreatment system for high-volume print shops. This system allows for a totally integrated process – pretreats, cures and heat presses – with a single scan and loading of the platen by one operator.
One exhibitor even showed off a black Tesla Cybertruck!
All of the big names in printing were here: Xerox, sharp and Konica Minolta had large exhibits at the show. The Printing United Expo filled two halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center: Central and South.
Next year, the expo will be held at Orange County Convention Center from October 22-24, 2025.
For more info about the Printing United Expo, visit: https://www.printingunited.com/.
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